After a disastrous and heartrending visit to Bertha, in which I perceived that her decline had become even more pronounced, I felt I was ready to fully commit myself to the new, happy life I had found in Paris. I could not wait to return to Paris, to Céline’s apartment, where, I imagined, she would fly into my arms and smother me with kisses. I spent nearly all my time on the return journey imagining the scene, working out the most romantic things to say. We would continue to live in Paris, where Céline had her dancing and her admirers, and I would, if necessary, return to England now and then. Perhaps the time would come when we could, as a change, go to Thornfield as well. Yes, I am ashamed to say, I imagined that too, though Bertha was of a hearty constitution and could go on for decades.Decades—God,I thought,have mercy.
The coach horses could not travel fast enough, the ferry could not cut through the water fast enough, the horse I hired at the dockside could not gallop fast enough, to return me to my Céline. Evening was falling when I arrived at her apartment, where I was stunned by its silence, its emptiness. Even Annick, her maid, was not there. I hoped Céline would be returning soon, but of course life for Céline began in late afternoon and ended only when the last establishments closed, at three or four o’clock in the morning. There was no telling whom she was with.
After a few impatient moments, I laid my card on her toilette table and left the apartment and wandered the streets in a daze of disappointment.Where was she?I told myself she could be at tea or having her hair done, clinging desperately to the idea that she was mine, as I was already hers. As I walked, I found myself growing more and more anxious, angry even, that she had not been there waiting for me. Foolish man that I was, I still desired the world to revolve around me and my wishes.
But when I returned a few hours later, the apartment was still empty. Perhaps Céline was at a private party, I thought, and Annick had been given the evening off. I waited in her boudoir, breathing in her camellia scent, and after a time I opened the French doors and stepped out onto the balcony. The evening air was fresh, the moon shone full on the street, and the gaslight at the corner made a comforting glow. I sat there smoking and eating chocolate bonbons, imagining how it would be when Céline was my wife and we could spend quiet evenings by ourselves on summer nights like this, watching the carriages rolling past on their way to the opera.
One of those carriages drove up to the front of the hotel, and I recognized the equipage that had been my gift to Céline. I sat forward as the horses stopped, shaking their heads restlessly. Myangewas dressed in a hooded cashmere cloak that I recognized as one I had gifted her, though it seemed too warm for a June night, and there was her tiny foot peeping out from under the skirt of her dress, as, with a light movement, she skipped down from the carriage. I rose, all smiles, ready to call out a greeting, when another figure emerged behind her. It was cloaked as well, but wearing a man’s spurred heel that rang on the pavement and the hat of a cavalry officer. He and Céline disappeared, passing under theporte cochèreof the hotel.
Suddenly my chest felt pressed with a great weight. I remained rooted in place, though at the last moment, before they entered the apartment, I thought to reach through the open window and draw the curtain across it, with just the barest of openings, that I might view and hear their assignation. Annick came in first—I had not even heard her return, so enamored was I of the evening—and she lit a lamp, then withdrew. A moment later the couple entered, laughing softly at some joke. There she was, in all her glory—in a rose-colored silken dress and jewels I had given her—and he in his officer’s uniform. I recognized him as a young roué—someone I knew to be beneath her. Céline saw the card I had left, and she pointed at it and laughed, deriding my personal defects, she who had over and over told me she found me handsome and charming, but now I heard that I was as ugly as a stray dog, and just as graceless. All the love I had thought I felt for Céline fled in those few moments, and my new sentiment was confirmed as their mindless chatter continued: frivolous, stupid, mercenary.
I could not bear to hear more, and I stepped through the window and without preamble freed Céline from any obligation to me and gave her notice to vacate the apartment as soon as possible. I threw down a few francs for any immediate need and made to leave, disregarding her screams and protestations, as she was suddenly intent on revealing to me that she did truly love me after all and was sorry, etcetera, etcetera. At the door, I turned and told thechevalierthat I expected him the next morning at the Bois de Boulogne, and then I closed the door on Céline’s continued hysterics.
In the morning, though it was the first duel I had ever fought, I made quick work of the fellow, wounding him in the arm. His shot went far wide of the mark, a good example of the state of the French military.
One might forgive a single night’s mistake, but it is quite another to hear your lover belittle you to another in the crudest of language. I was finished forever with Céline, and I vowed I would never again give a woman power over me as I had done with Céline.
Chapter 7
Leaving Paris as quickly as I could, I traveled: Rome, Naples, Florence, Saint Petersburg, even Baden-Baden, where I spent hours—no, days—at the gaming tables, as if winning or losing were an antidote. I cared little which city I was in, or with whom I spent my time. I was in those days a very changed man from the one who had first left England at the age of twenty-one. Then, I had been a child, seeing things in black and white, assuming there must be a satisfactory moral solution to any problem, assuming that what one saw on the surface was all there was to see. I marveled at my past self: what had become of that naïve, softhearted boy who had wanted to believe the best of everyone?
Though the angry wound of Céline’s betrayal never fully healed, as time went on and my bed grew cold I did occasionally find in my travels a woman who at first I thought could be a partner for me, but each time I was disappointed. There was an Italian who was charming and beautiful and alive with verve. I enjoyed her company, her passion, her very Italian sense of humor, and she struck me as the sort of woman Bertha might have become, with a different family history. But the more time I spent with her, the more doubtful I became, for while Giacinta was not mad, she had a violent and unprincipled side that disturbed me. I also dallied for a time in Saint Petersburg with the daughter of a German merchant there, an innocent young girl not yet into her twentieth year, who stirred in me the same sympathies as Alma had, back in Maysbeck. But as time passed, I saw that what I had taken for quietude and calm was really ignorance and mindlessness. I left her with a gentleness I had not bestowed on Giacinta, and I gave her enough money to open a shop of her own. There were others, to be sure, but we never seemed to fit together as I imagined a man and his wife should, although God knows I had little enough experience in what that would mean.
At the same time, events were roiling in Jamaica. Six months after I quit Paris, disappointed that their demands for more freedom had been rejected, tens of thousands of Jamaican slaves rose in revolt. The rebellion was short-lived and the subsequent punishment brutal, but it was the beginning of the end. Two years later, while I was romancing Clara, slavery ended for good. I was late in hearing the news, for such information was not welcomed in Russia, where the serfs were inclined to believe in freedom themselves. But Osmon managed to get word to me, and I remained confident he was doing his best under the circumstances, so I went back to the gambling tables, for, indeed, what could I have done from so far away, and what point was there in returning to Jamaica?
***
Some years later, I drifted through Paris again. I happened to be sitting at table with Monsieur Roget at the Café d’Or when Céline arrived, holding a little girl by the hand. It was far too late for such a young child to be about, but the whole table made over her as if she were a princess, and in fact she was remarkable looking—fairylike in a shimmering pink dress with a large pink bow in her blond curls. She moved her hands as she spoke, as a dancer would, and it was clear that she delighted in being the center of attention. Céline nodded meaningfully at me, but I stared stonily back, for, I thought, if she meant to claim that this creature was mine, it must certainly be clear to all that she was not.
As I made my excuses to leave, attempting not to create a scene, Céline held her hand out to mine and I could do nothing but take it, and she slipped me her card. To my regret, I accepted her invitation.
She greeted me the next day with kisses and embraces, and the child, whose name was Adèle, was well trained in the art of coquetry. She climbed into my lap and held my face in both her little hands and planted kisses on my cheeks. I had brought a doll for her, and I suppose she was thanking me, but I was repulsed by such a forward manner in one so young. I stayed at Céline’s apartment as short a time as I could, determined not to give the impression that I had forgiven her. She tried to imply that Adèle was my own, but she must have known I could easily deny it—there was nothing at all about me in that little face. I fled the apartment, insistent that both mother and daughter were gone from my life forever.
From there I continued my travels, my gambling, my liaisons with unsuitable women. I am not proud of that rootless life. But even so, changed as I was, more cynical about human nature, more hard-hearted—more, perhaps, like my father than I had ever wished to be—the boy I had once been lived on in one undeniable way: I continued to yearn for Thornfield. Not as it had become, barren and warped in secrecy, but the Thornfield of my childhood imagination.
My self-imposed exile was not without comfort, however. Once, in Baden-Baden, I picked up a companion who has, so many times since, warmed me with his presence. One day, having grown tired of casino games, I set out for a change of pace and caught a coach going toward the Badener Höhe, where I aimed to take a long walk in the Schwarzwald. And quite a walk it turned out to be, for I lost my way, and God knows what would have become of me if a scruffy-looking, half-grown dog hadn’t appeared as I leaned against a fallen log to tear into my lunch. The animal gazed at me with such intelligence that I was moved to offer him the rest of my bun. He stood at my knee, chewing with gusto, and when he had finished, he looked expectantly at me again, as if I could conjure more, which made me laugh. When I rose to try to find my way back, though my food was gone, he followed. But he must have judged me an inferior guide, for after an hour of wandering in the darkening forest he suddenly set out ahead of me, glancing back now and then as if to make sure I was still there, until we had reached civilization. The next morning he was waiting for me outside my hotel, and he has been my constant comrade ever since. I named him Pilot, for he surely led me back that first day, and has often given me succor when no one else could.
I seemed to have little luck in quitting troublesome women, however, for a few years later, when I was again in Paris and passing an evening with Monsieur Roget, Céline’s name came up. “Ah yes,” he said, nodding. “Céline: what a pity.”
“Pity?” I repeated.
“She ran off with some Italian. A person of little account, unfortunately; she did not always have the best taste in men.”
I said nothing, choosing not to include myself in that slight, and he went on: “A musician, I think. He sometimes performed with the opera. He took her to Italy.”
His terminology suddenly struck me. “Did nothave the best taste? Is she…”
“Well, yes, I understand she went only a year after she left for Italy. Consumption: she ignored it for months before she left.”
I was stunned. Céline, so full of life: dead? “And the child?” I asked, unthinking.
He laughed then. “If you were to run off with Varens, would you take her child along?” His face suddenly went serious. “The little girl—Adèle is her name, is it not?—she can’t be yours—?”
“She is not.”
“Ahh.” He nodded. “Perhaps the Chevalier du Bellay.”
“I would believethat,” I responded, a certain bitterness resurfacing.
